futureofthebook.com

exception

“The University of Chicago Mansueto Library turns upside down all of the conventional notions about book storage and collection management. The solution the university chose is a costly one, but they believe that they have invested in the core principles of the research and discovery process.” S+R blog

Why is the Mansueto Library so exceptional? Why haven’t all research libraries more naturally transitioned to digital utilities and screen resources without displacing print? Some more feral impulse has caused an irrational response.

bound away

“Thank you again for participating in MIT’s Mellon symposium “Unbound: Speculations on the Future of the Book.” We were extremely pleased by the turnout and lively engagement between panelists and participants. The event would have been nothing without such a rich range of perspectives. Thank you for sharing your presence and thoughtful questions about this versatile technology.”

The enthusiasm of future of the book conferences can induce an exhaustion and dissipation as soon as it concludes. Organizers relax and participants return. MIT’s Unbound appears to want to live on. A recent email lists review sources and offers a continuing blog site. But a continuing half-life could also dissipate into an afterglow of commemorative postings.

Needed is an authentic FotB archive. This could be built at a research library. An easy approach to justification of such an archive is not only documentation and study of the disciplines emerging in reading behavior, reading technology book economics and book history, but also the collection allure of another genre of fan-zines and prophetic movements.

cover role

A recent essay by Craig Mod discusses the arbitrary and unfulfilled interaction of ebook software and ebook hardware. He uses the stilted ebook cover and illustrates the missing functionality of covers in ebooks. Let’s also consider this relationship in the codex and beyond.

Bookbinders refer to the cover-to-text attachment. A whole taxonomy of such structures is provided from the history of the book. There are laced, cased, laced-case, and even double cover laced-laced and laced-cased designs. But the tutorial is not the point. This legacy of structures manages manipulative leverages of reading actions. In an exemplary laced structure of 16th century bookbinding motion of the cover directly conveys to the text producing graceful openings and closings of the fan of the leaves animating the readers’ conceptual adventure.

But even this is not the point. As Craig asserts, the function of the cover must convey through the content. Here we encounter the arbitrary and unfulfilled state of the integration of hardware and software in ebooks. This is a very large issue, especially if there is consideration of the deep refinement of the integration of hardware and software, codex and content, in physical books.

Behaviors embed. Connectivity transactions, navigation manipulations and mobility excursions of hardware, with both codex and electronic device, become habituated. Perhaps in a similar way we habituate our engagement with content and its paratextual display as produced by software. The paratextual display of the codex has a particular advantage of long-term refinement and received assimilation. We are taught to read a paper comic book, newspaper or codex adventure novel through assimilation of well-refined, standardized display.

Ebook software, on the other hand, is always in flux and in revision and in a disorganized, proprietary relation with its hardware. But the most peculiar obstacle is chaos of paratext display as each device attempts to act out various format presentations and display multiple units of content on a single, flickering screen. This very complexity compromises reading efficiency as it disrupts attention and dilutes meaning. An interruption or visual tangent is read. When readers mention that they experience screen and print books equally well they really mean that they can impose a codex reading skill set on a screen book experience. They indulge a distortion that they manage.

wet pate

Joyce and I had our portrait taken as a quarter-plate tintype by an expert wet plate photographer, Haven Noble of Mt. Pleasant. Like the Daugerrotype it is an in-camera mirror image. Sam Clemens first portrait on the river front in Hannibal was the same mirror image. He understood this and set is name in display type knowing the name would appear read-right.

Less apparent is Sam’s left-handedness. All compositors use the left hand to hold the stick, both right and left handed. But Sam defied rules. He is holding the stick in his right (appearing to be left) hand and was picking type with his left. Note also his finger ring. Due to slight asymmetry of the face, reversing this image reveals the smirk.

repackaging

“The Queen Victoria’s Journals website is mobile-compliant and can be viewed from all iPhones, Blackberry and Android phones.” (from TeleRead)

An interesting aspect of the writing on the wall is the wall or the delivery unit. In the early centuries works of scripture were selected and deselected to compile a canonic Bible. The selected units were then subdivided into chapters by the thirteenth century and the chapters subdivided into verses in the sixteenth century.

Today congregations, lacking Bibles in hand, view “sermon bullet points in PowerPoint”. (see Christianity and the Future of the Book) Over the altar a phosphor screen produces a vision of floating scripture fragments not that dissimilar from bits of papyrus. A side effect could easily be the repackaging of the Holy Ghost if not of Others.

Librarians are aware that such repackaging of delivery units is of consequence to culture transmission. Now is the time for them to mention this. Librarians are not preferential of any particular delivery unit but they are capable of advocating for continuing utilization of them all; both books and bullet points, print and screen together. They can even risk avocation of the interdependence of multiple delivery units as necessary for responsible culture transmission. Consider it a plan of action.

the center shifts

“Tim Barrett has been appointed Associate Professor with tenure; his appointment is housed in the School of Library and Information Science but his teaching, art/research, and service are entirely in the UICB. Julie Leonard has been appointed Associate Professor on the tenure-track; her appointment is likewise housed in SLIS but with teaching, art/research, and service entirely in the UICB. Bruce Whiteman, retired Head Librarian of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles and a regular instructor in the California Rare Book School, will be appointed as an adjunct in the UICB, teaching Descriptive Bibliography (and potentially other courses) for us, starting Spring 2013. The Center remains autonomous, with all administrative oversight staying as is (in other words, we are not a subset of SLIS). Bruce brings new content to the curriculum and years of experience that dovetails well with our mission.” (from memo to Faculty)

FotB has been a fan of close coordination between the library school and the University of Iowa Center for the Book. The initial SLIS/UICB joint program was designed by Christine Pawley and is now advanced by Center Director Mat Brown.

starch book cloth

Over-covering 18th c. paper bindings with leather is mentioned by Nicholas Pickwoad. Another possible over-covering could be present with 18th c. canvas covers. The first entry in a manuscript recipe book of Herbert Beaver, July 14, 1765 is for “Clear Starching for Book Muslin”. The method, without blueing or coloring, explains the natural muslin tow color of these early cloth bindings. (from Szathmary Culinary Manuscripts)

etext(books)

Prospects for screen textbooks are advancing at MicroSoft and Barnes and Noble and at Apple. Apple has an FotB address (dot blogspot).

amazon delta

The Kindle can be the equivalent of a free parking space at a shopping mall. The incentive is first to facilitate visitation and then to facilitate the widest range of shopping opportunities. Amazon will act as the mall developer. Kindle will be a fulfillment device much like a card-swipe device.

in the cards

“Every screen is a touch screen, and when it’s not they get confused as hell. Kids expect instant delivery of everything. If you can’t get it right that second, it doesn’t exist. When you tell them that a thing they want doesn’t exist digitally, that it’s a physical thing and that’s it, it blows their mind. If there is some book they need to write a report on, say, Mayan culture, and it’s not online, they get mad.” Librarian in Black

Librarians are mediators between the physical and virtual. This legacy role is also futuristic but the role is increasingly difficult as we depart from a more stable print library.

In the print library both the books and their access utilities were less mortal than the librarians themselves. Systems were established to sustain library operation beyond the individual motivations and uncertain careers of the librarians themselves. Book formats and card catalog formats were used by generations of librarians.

There has been a reversal. Now the library media and their access methods are more mortal than the librarians. Logic can suggest that sustainability can emerge from a new standardization, not of the ephemeral formats or access methods, but from a cohesive librarian motivation. Librarians are default, standardized mediators between the physical and virtual and between books and screens.

A suggested premise for this newer LIS agenda is the inherent interdependence of physical and virtual, book and screen, library services. Neither will flourish with out the other. A whole agenda, departing from binary debate, can build a methodology of mediations across the varieties of library service. There is a whole terrain between rushing ahead and standing still.

s+r blog

“Those presidents, provosts, and deans that are willing to rethink the traditional lecture-recitation mode of instruction to incorporate these new technologies are likely to open up far more possibilities than those that merely try to plug the technology into their existing curricula.” ITHAKA S+R blog

This research group is an academy of change. Prospects for screen transacted learning and instructor/student mediations are at issue and the blog will provide a forum. The blog format is an edifice of a new, mediated academy.

Nicholas Carr offers a good exposition concerning the paradox of an establishment of constant change that lacks innovation.

“One of the consequences is that, as we move to the top level of the innovation hierarchy, the inventions have less visible, less transformative effects. We’re no longer changing the shape of the physical world or even of society, as it manifests itself in the physical world. We’re altering internal states, transforming the invisible self. Not surprisingly, when you step back and take a broad view, it looks like stagnation – it looks like nothing is changing very much. That’s particularly true when you compare what’s happening today with what happened a hundred years ago, when our focus on Technologies of Prosperity was peaking and our focus on Technologies of Leisure was also rapidly increasing, bringing a highly visible transformation of our physical circumstances.” Nicholas Carr

binary

As we read paratext ever wider features appear. This scaffold or apparatus of print is conveyed and reinvented in screen display. One binary feature that has a transacted feature across print and screen is black and white. This is the convention of black words on white paper.

This binary was first violated in the early screen phosphors where the words were green. But the dedicated electrophoric e-ink screen features ever closer approximations of black on white. These dedicated binary displays have little hope of surviving in the color world of phosphor screens. Yet some evocation of print ink has an attraction as the basic nook or Kindle e-ink screens persist.

A larger issue remains. Is the artifice of reading better enabled by black and white differentiation from a colored world? This is almost a question extracting the Hominids from nature. And then we have an even larger question. Is nature really reality and all of cultural transmission really artificial?

between

Looking between the print book and screen book, what composite could combine the best and not the worst of the two prototypes? The composite would use the economic and material attributes of the physical book and the visual and connective flexibility of the screen book.

To wit; an inexpensive thin screen title. Each ITST book would be sold with its locked, resident content. It would be owned outright and could be collected into physical libraries but would also provide ancillary content and off-line-on-line directory easily up-dated. The ITST would weight only a few grams and be only a few millimeters thin with a screen dimension in three options of phone, tablet or lap-top sizes. These modules, like CDs would shelve compactly. The screen display would be electrophoric with touch navigation. As with an electronic toothbrush, the entire library could be recharged as needed.

What is not to like?

unbound

The most recent future of the book conference was at MIT, May 3-4, 2012. Entitled, “UNBOUND: Speculations of the Future of the Book”, the core program provided presentations that deconstructed the book from its legacy functions, then speculated on the reshaping of the book and concluded with influences of electronic literature.

This synopsis of the state of book based culture transmission was almost too abstract. Included for the preservation perspective was a fiery noetic performed by Christian Bök who is conducting a experiment called The Xenotext which involves genetically engineering a bacterium that can become an archive for storing a poem in its DNA genome for eternity. Over apochal, near eternity time spans the evidence of a sentient species on this planet, will otherwise disappear. Bök rates documentary mechanism as inadequate beyond 10k years. Yet as Bök remarks, his cypher for noetic preservation and genetic archiving is a bizarre ecological mission against the existential threat.

What I have noticed is that the one constituency with the best overall grip on the prospects for the future of the book is the publishers’. Scientists, engineers, scholars, poets and artists perspectives on book prospects tend to be distorted and lack authentic immersion in the continuities and changes in reading behaviors. To be fair it (the future of the book) is an extremely wide topic but the MIT audience is unusual in its high interest in cross-disciplinary study. The MIT press (both its Cambridge outlet and its editorial director) provided the needed reference coordinates. They are watching reading behaviors, attention band-width, and added cross-product values. Gita Manaktala provided a terrific synopsis of shifting reading practice, wider reader attention and broader publication values and tenure gate-keeping methods. While the general discussion is 95% screen university press people also understand that 90% to 95% of their revenue is from print. They await evolution of the commodities of electronic formats, not just scenarios concerning their operability and allure.

The MIT meeting was well attended (240 attending) and engaging although somewhat reminiscent of an ambiguity of the assimilation together of paper and screen display and delivery. These meetings sometimes exemplify an orality-based discussion of literacy that offers the worst of both worlds without looking between.

Have more than ten years of conferences popularized and resolved the future of the book or neither? These events have bred an enclave of specialists. There is also emergent premise. With the new screen environments the partition between reading and writing is dissolving and the overlap space is useful for thinking. This was one of Bob Stein’s MIT contentions as he discussed his newest educational program called SocialBook. Bob was at the first 1991 conference demonstrating his Voyager, media based, books and has been a tireless tracker. This read/write position aligns suggestively with another conference evaluation that the flood of information is more difficult for authors than it is for readers. The actual commodities that will span the print/screen book are still emerging.

model

In early stages of interaction of print and screen books we can consider other tried models of media intersection that can assist our expectations. These span history and are fairly well transacted including such as scroll to codex, manuscript to print or the evolution of paratext ecologies of such as monograph books, magazines, newspapers or fanzines. Another particularly useful model that is well transacted is paper and printing and their convergence.

Paper and printing originated as rather isolated crafts. Printing emerged from stamping and de-bossing while papermaking first served an alternative to cloth. But soon the paper and printing merged together into print publication products. But paper and printing could not produce such products alone. Yet another constituent was also needed. This was a method and technology, of bookbinding, to commodify this composite product.

The paper/printing/bookbinding product composite may a useful model again to position requisites of the content delivery, display and commodification as we merge print and screen books. As a model it is also suggestive that printing, more closely associated with content transmission, received most of the focus as an agent of change. The display mechanism and the product integration, represented by paper and bookbinding, have been less regarded as agents of change. But as we known all components were needed and needed to be integrated to transact change.

news

An essay by the editor of futureofthebook.com is in the Archival Products Newsletter.

subvention

“Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) and Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today announced a ground breaking program aimed at utilizing technology to develop a love for learning. The partnership offers schools the opportunity to acquire award-winning HMH digital titles on pre-loaded Barnes & Noble NOOK Readers.” (from TeleRead)

The transformative result is a subvention of the book into an integrated reading device of a library. A new practice of bundled library reading will assimilate books into a larger learning experience perhaps parsed at the grade level. Consider researching prospects for the book. Popularly named “the future of the book”, the topic spans publishing, authorship, book arts, academic book studies and reading behavior. Legacy conventions of textbooks, scholarly monographs, literary genres, and crafts and arts of the book appear unsustainable as we witness a sudden disruption in the history of the book. This transition deserves archival attention.

An archival collection would build from sources documenting intersection, interplay and interdependence of print and screen book formats. The source material is currently ephemeral including conference reports and proceedings, blog activities, media coverage. There is also an assemblage of devices and evidence of their ephemeral infrastructures.

unbound at mit

This conference is an eerie metaphor for evolution of social species. Cultural evolution is launched from the relatively stable platform of bonic evolution. Edward O. Wilson points out (see his Social Conquest of Earth) that the ant has advantages in the tens of millions of years but lacked a body size sufficient to manage fire. Other outcomes, including noetic preservation and a fiery poetic orality performed by Christian Bök who is currently conducting a conceptual experiment called The Xenotext which involves genetically engineering a bacterium so that it might become an archive for storing a poem in its genome for eternity. Over apochal, near eternity time spans the evidence of a sentient species on this planet, will disappear. Yet as Bök remarks, this is a cypher for noetic preservation and genetic archiving. Such preservation is a bizarre ecological mission against the existential threat.

Or you can hang out at the MIT Press bookstore that specializes in media and social technologies. I picked up some great books including, Markus Krajewski’s, Paper Machines, About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929. Also I have The Story Telling Animal, How Stories Make Us Human, by Jonathan Gottschall and Masters of the Planet, the Search for Our Human Origins by Ian Tattersall. Then I found a little book, The Future of Looking Back by Richard Banks which is an “exploration of how to preserve human values in an era of planned obsolescence”. If this will not fulfill the noetic preservation discipline there will also be a field trip to the MIT preservation lab and the endless conference to come.

ekphasic apophenia

Another future of the book conference has gone. The MIT UnBound meeting was well attended (240 attending) and engaging although somewhat reminiscent of an abiguity of the assimilation together of paper and screen display and delivery. These meetings sometimes exemplify an orality-based discussion of literacy that offers the worst of both worlds without looking between.

Again it is the folks from inside the university presses that offer refreshing, pragmatic evaluation. They are both in between and looking between and Gita Manaktala from MIT Press provided a terrific synopsis of shifting reading practice, wider attention and broader publication values and gate-keeping methods. While the general discussion is 95% about screen delivery, the university press people also understand that 90% to 95% of their revenue is from print. They await the commodifications of electronic formats, not just scenarios concerning their operability and allure. University press editors do not use PowerPoint.

Here is a take-home from Boston. This is that in the new screen environments the partition between reading and writing is dissolving and the overlap space is useful for thinking. This was one of Bob Stein’s contentions as he discussed his newest educational program called SocialBook. This position aligns suggestively with another conference evaluation that the flood of information is more difficult for authors than it is for readers.

Haptic history popped up as well within Bonnie Mak’s work on the functionality of the page. This topic hovers as a corrective for the disembodied emind. It also skirts the important issue of evolution of paratext apparatus. For outright enjoyment there was a presentation by Kate Hayles. It was a performance of false correlates including suggestive conspiracies of the 88 piano keys, 88 constellations and (88 Linotype magazine channels!). Best also were the magnificent performances of Christian Bök as mentioned with his strategies for noetic bionic archiving within DNA. So the date of the end of the world is moved again and the enthusiasm of the conference and participation of advanced students suggests that future of the book conference type will continue to be popular.